Mid-day Update

PODCAST: The first health care sign up deadline approaches

Lizzie O'Leary Dec 23, 2013
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Mid-day Update

PODCAST: The first health care sign up deadline approaches

Lizzie O'Leary Dec 23, 2013
HTML EMBED:
COPY

Updated 1:15pm ET: The Obama administration announced on Monday it was giving a one-day grace period to consumers shopping for health insurance under Obamacare. The deadline to sign up for a plan on the health care exchanges was supposed to be today — but has been extended until Dec. 24.

Financial concerns explain why consumers have waited until the final hours to sign up for a health insurance plan on healthcare.gov. But really — this is not the drop-dead deadline to avoid a penalty. That’s March 31. Duke behavioral scientist Peter Ubel says if folks can’t make up their minds by the end of the day, that may be OK.

One hundred years ago, a group of bankers and politicians went to Jekyll Island, off the coast of Georgia, under the guise of a duck hunting trip. When they came back, America had a central bank.

It’s been about as good a year for holiday jobs as during the boom years before the Great Recession, when 700,000 to 750,000 seasonal retail jobs were added from September to January in a typical year from September.

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